DOCUMENTS

Senator BELL (New South Wales—One Nation Whip) (12:17): I rise to take note of the minister's explanation. Let me start off by saying that we're no longer dealing with one housing crisis in this country. We're dealing with four, because Australians are struggling to buy; renters are now being smashed by higher rent; recent buyers are now carrying huge mortgages, and, in growing numbers, they're watching their equity disappear; and now the pipeline of new homes we desperately need is collapsing.

Housing Industry Association data released just this morning shows new-home sales in Victoria have fallen 27 per cent. Across Australia, they fell 10 per cent in August and almost 20 per cent over winter, and the HIA says that means fewer homes will be started next year. So, when the Senate asks for more information in regard to the Labor government's five per cent deposit scheme and continues to get back documents that are heavily redacted and insufficient, then we have every right—in fact, we have an obligation on behalf of the Australian people—to continue to insist that they comply.

We need to understand what it is that is at the heart of these terrible failures from this government that is so dramatically hurting the Australian people in the housing market—hurting renters and driving up prices—because that is where the Labor government's housing policy has got us. We're at the point where Labor has managed to fail Australians at every point in the housing market.

This is why the documents the Senate has ordered are so important. Labor's answer to unaffordable housing has been to let first home buyers enter the market with a deposit as small as five per cent. It seems that that is not making houses cheaper.

It's not leading to more houses being built. It's simply allowed a buyer to take on a larger mortgage with a much thinner equity buffer. That matters a lot more now than it did when Labor was selling the scheme, because interest rates are going up and they're going to continue to go up.

I think we are staring down the barrel of a couple more interest rate rises this year. The pain and suffering that's going to inflict on a lot of people who Labor claim to be helping is, I think, hard to measure at this stage. So we need to see the modelling.

We need to see the detail behind this scheme to make sure that, when these problems that do arise are hurtling towards us like a steam train, we know how to deal with them. But Labor continues to hide this information from the Senate. More analysis, from Cotality this time, shows that around one-third of homes bought since August last year are now valued below their purchase price.

Aussie Home Loans say that 20.7 per cent of Australians who bought since July 2023 now have less than 20 per cent equity in their home, and the average mortgage is around $646,000. These are not people sitting on enormous gains built up over decades. These are recent buyers, many of them exactly the sorts of people Labor said they were helping.

Well, it doesn't look like you're helping. It looks like you are pushing them towards more pain, more suffering, higher mortgages, less money for the groceries and less money for their future. Some are finding it harder to refinance because they now simply don't have enough equity.

They are in what is termed a 'mortgage prison'—that is where the term 'mortgage prison' comes from. If you go into a home with a five per cent deposit, you have very little room for prices to move against you. A modest fall can wipe out that buffer, but the debt is still there and the repayments are still there.

What did Treasury tell government about that risk? I think the Senate has every right to know. Did it model falling prices?

Did it model refinancing problems for highly leveraged buyers? Did it look at what happens when rising repayments and falling values hit at the same time? If that work was done, why does Labor still refuse to release it?

This scheme goes to the heart of the mistakes that Labor keeps making on housing. It keeps treating a housing shortage as though it's a finance problem. Australian doesn't have too few mortgages.

Australia has too few homes and too many migrants, and today's figures show that problem is getting worse. Yet Labor spent years driving demand higher through record migration while failing to get enough homes built. It has pushed more people into the market without fixing the shortages underneath it.

Then it tries to paper over the problem—and then, when we ask to see the information behind your decisions, you refuse to hand it over, and now we're seeing the results. People still trying to buy face huge prices, renters are still paying enormous rents, recent buyers are now trapped with large debts and shrinking equity, and the supply pipeline is weakening—four crises all at the same time, and Labor needs to own every one of them.

There are other ways to deal with this. One Nation's approach is to deal with the cause: get migration back to sustainable levels, take pressure off demand and work on getting the cost of building down. But ultimately this government should release the documents and explain exactly what advice it received before encouraging more first home buyers to take on this risk.